The seeds of an idea

Daniel Patrick Sheehan, OF THE MORNING CALL

Out behind Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church in Allentown, some Central Catholic High School students spent a muddy Tuesday planting tomatoes, onions, peppers, watermelons and herbs in a garden they hope will feed the urban poor this summer and for years to come.

It was class work — part of a program called "The Central City Project," in which students at the venerable Catholic school on Fourth Street are learning to connect with the people and places of their urban surroundings.

"It's meant to strengthen our Catholic mission of social justice and to interact with our local community," said John Gribowich, a DeSales University theology lecturer who conceived the program and coordinates its various missions: tutoring at the Boys and Girls Club, providing baby clothes and other items to young mothers, conducting "street outreach" to neighborhood residents.

Gribowich said about 200 students, mainly juniors and seniors, have been involved in some way since the project began this school year.

"Since the school is in the community, it feels good to give back," said junior Emily Arevalo of Upper Macungie Township, who is typical of today's Central students in that she doesn't live downtown but comes to school from the suburbs.

The patron saint of this project isn't a saint at all, but many think she ought to be. Dorothy Day was a convert who founded the Catholic Worker movement during the Great Depression, advocating communal living off the land (she founded a long-defunct farm for that purpose outside Easton) and engaging in what the church calls corporal works of mercy — feeding the hungry, sheltering the homeless, caring for the sick.

Day also ran Catholic Worker houses in New York — centers of shelter and charity that were imitated across the nation by like-minded Catholics who found a blueprint for living in the Sermon on the Mount.

"She's been my personal hero," said Gribowich, who lives in the former rectory of Our Lady of Mount Carmel and aims to follow the Day model there. He described the way of life as transcending traditional labels.

"It's not liberal, it's not conservative," he said. "It's just Catholic. It's engaging the culture, not fearing the culture."

Out Lady of Mount Carmel closed three years ago during the consolidation of parishes in the Catholic Diocese of Allentown but is still home to an ecumenical soup kitchen. The vegetable garden will supply that operation, though part of the crops may be diverted to make salsa or tomato sauce. The students foresee marketing those products under the school's Viking mascot logo.

"That will put money back into the soup kitchen," said senior Lucas Filipos, planting carrots at the rear of the garden.

Joanie Guman, a Central alum, Penn State graduate and registered dietitian, volunteered to help with the garden project. She called it an ideal endeavor for students because it teaches the dual lesson of caring for people and the world they live in.

"If you start them young, that flourishes as they grow older," she said.